A patient in Norway, a woman infected with the Ebola virus, will be the recipient of the last remaining Zmapp dose in the world. This same experimental drug had been administered to patients from the United States, both of whom were able to survive the disease after also being infected with Ebola in Liberia. The supply for ZMapp has already run out and the pharmaceutical company responsible for its production had already said that it is going to take months before the supply is replenished.
The woman contracted the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone with the international organization Doctors Without Borders. The Norwegian Medicines Agency has already begun conducting tests to find out how she got the infection, and she is currently being held in isolation at the Oslo University Hospital.
According to the Norwegian Medicines Agency, it has already authorized the hospital facility to import the experimental Ebola drug, along with other unapproved medications such as TKM-Ebola and Avigan that were initially developed to manage flu pandemics. Medical director for the Agency, Dr. Steinar Madsen, said that the last available dose of Zmapp is now making its way from Canada to Norway. "When there are patients with acute need for medicine, we allowed unapproved drugs to be imported," he said of the situation.
Because of this move, however, questions have been raised in the international community about why this rare drug is being given to this patient instead of the critically ill patient in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, who received instead another experimental drug Brincidofovir. Duncan passed away early Wednesday morning. Before this, two Spanish missionaries had already been treated with ZMapp but still succumbed to the disease, leading to more questions as to whether the drug was in fact the deciding factor in the recovery of the other patients who received them, or if there were other factors that led to their convalescence.